From IntRoLab

IntRoLab - Intelligent / Interactive / Integrated / Interdisciplinary Robot Lab of Université de Sherbrooke develops mobile robots performing in various environments. To this end, the laboratory has designed the system ManyEars, an artificial hearing system for a mobile robot to locate, track and separate sound sources in real time. The system requires a multi-channel synchronous audio capture card. Commercial audio acquisition cards are available, but they are expensive, bulky, inefficient and too generic for the needs of ManyEars. Although functional, these cards do not meet the specific needs of mobile robotics and IntRoLab.

Designing a synchronous audio capture card with low power consumption, 8 input channels, 2 output channels and a small form factor is our main goal. The first iteration of the project is an "Open Source Hardware" prototype providing wiring diagrams, circuit board, full documentation and source code. Everything is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The design is based on the XMOS Mutichannel USB Audio Reference Design.